Many believe the gypsies to be a mysterious race who possess
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the
latest Conspiracy Journal catalog in pdf format. All items
are available now except for the Cutting Edge Of Reality book which is
being formatted and should be available VERY SHORTLY. You can order and
we will ship when available. And if you order in the next 5 days you
can take a 10 percent discount off anything in the issue.

They might know the name, but
nobody ever says, "I want to be like Louis Slotin when I grow up." And
with good reason. Despite being fiercely intelligent, quick thinking
and brave, Slotin is famous for something that nobody really wants to
be famous for---namely, dying horribly. In May 1946, Slotin, a
researcher on the Manhattan Project, became the second person in
history to be killed by a criticality accident, the unintentional
triggering of a nuclear chain reaction.

Slotin's story made it to Hollywood, fictionalized in the movie "Fat
Man and Little Boy". Not everyone got such a public legacy. As the cold
war neared an end in the 1980s, scientists in the USSR began to share
information with their American counterparts, and, for the first time,
we learned about the Soviet Slotins. Now, their legacy will shape the
way emergency personnel respond to nuclear accidents and terrorism and,
hopefully, make it easier to save lives...

"Criticality accident" is just a fancy way of saying "nuclear reaction
happening where and when you don't want it to". It starts with fissile
material--atoms whose nuclei have a tendency to split apart. Get these
materials in the way of free neutrons and a neutron can enter the
nucleus of an atom and rupture it. That fission releases energy, and
neutrons, which cause more nuclear fissions in nearby atoms. The chain
reaction keeps going and going. It will stop on its own, but only when
it's good and ready---which is, to say, when a release of energy forces
the fissile material apart (think: explosion), when enough of the
material has been used up so that what's left no longer throws off
enough neutrons to keep the reaction going, or when heat energy
produced by the reaction builds up enough that it makes the
atoms--which are most unstable at room temperature--less likely to
split.

It's a little scary, but these accidents are extremely rare. The Los
Alamos National Laboratory Review of Criticality Accidents lists only
60, worldwide, since we started playing with this stuff in the 1940s.
Most didn't kill anyone. And 38 of the 60 can't even be called
completely unexpected, as they occurred in research reactors and during
experiments where scientists were bringing fissile materials together
to gauge the point at which criticality happens.

In fact, that's what Louis Slotin was doing, slowly lowering the top
half of a neutron-reflecting shell over a sphere of fissile plutonium.
Today, nobody would attempt that experiment except from a safe
distance. Slotin, however, was using his bare hands to hold the shell,
and had a screwdriver propped in there to keep the two halves from
touching. A crowd of seven colleagues was watching him work when the
screwdriver slipped out, sealing the shell and launching a reaction. I
call Slotin brave and quick-thinking because, instead of freaking and
running, he pulled the shell apart, probably saving his coworkers'
lives. He, however, died nine days later.

Slotin's story is pretty well-known. But, in Russia, similar accidents
were happening that nobody knew about for decades. Like Slotin's, some
these stemmed from both unfortunate chance, and decisions by the
researchers that, with 20/20 hindsight, look a little silly. Why would
depend on a precariously placed screwdriver to save you from certain
death? Why would you try to run through a criticality experiment after
normal work hours, without key safety measures in place, and with the
goal of trying to be done in time to make it to the theater that
evening...as two unfortunate Russian scientists did in 1968.

Other Russian accidents, though, had little to do with the people
hurt--except in that those people simply didn't have enough training
for the jobs they had. In 1953, two workers at Mayak, a factory that
processed fissile material for experimental and military use, were
exposed to a criticality accident. But neither knew enough about
nuclear fission to realize that. They knew something weird had gone
down, but didn't think it was a big deal. Instead, they fixed the
problem and went back to work. They finished their shift and, because
Mayak had no automatic criticality alarms, nobody knew anything had
gone wrong at all until two days later when one of the men collapsed at
work. He survived, but only after a long illness that involved the
amputation of both his legs.

Neil Wald, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh's
department of Environmental and Occupational Health, was one of the
first Americans to learn about this, and other accidents at Mayak. He
studies the impact of radiation on human health and was part of a team
that began working with Soviet counterparts in the 1980s to research
the accidents and use them to better understand how to help people
who've been exposed.

"They actually did quite a good job of keeping the medical records," he
told me. "They made the accidents state secrets, so they never threw
anything away. Everything we saw, all the documents, were stamped on
the back with a great big seal that said, 'State secret.'"

The goal of this collaboration is to develop a way of quickly
diagnosing radiation exposure, so that emergency personnel can show up
at the scene of an accident and be able to tell who needs the most
medical attention the fastest. Dr. Wald says the system could be used
both at nuclear facilities, and by regular EMTs responding to
situations where a dirty bomb has exploded, or some other intentional
nuclear exposure might have happened.

The Emdrive is an
electromagnetic drive that would generate thrust from a closed system —
“impossible” say some experts.

To critics, it’s flat-out junk science, not even worth thinking about.
But its inventor, Roger Shawyer, has doggedly continued his work. As
was reported last year, Chinese scientists claimed to validate his math
and were building their own version.

Shawyer gave a presentation earlier this week on the Emdrive’s progress
at the CEAS 2009 European Air & Space Conference. It answered few
questions, but hinted at how the Emdrive might transform spaceflight —
and warfare. If the technology works, that is.

The heart of the Emdrive is a resonant, tapered cavity filled with
microwaves. According to Shawyer, a relativistic effect generates a net
thrust, an effect confirmed by various Emdrives he has built as
demonstrations. Critics say that any thrust from the drive must come
from another source. Shawyer is adamant that the measured thrust is not
caused by other factors.

While the argument over the drive’s impossibility continues, so does
the engineering work. The problem is that nobody wants to talk about
it. Even Shawyer gives little away.

Last year, professor Yang Juan of the College of Astronautics at
Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an was happy to
confirm that they were building an Emdrive which would be tested by the
end of the year. But following the publication of this news in Danger
Room, the situation changed. I was informed that the publicity was very
unwelcome, especially any suggestion that there might be a military
application. (Yang had previous published a study on the use of plasma
as a weapon against low-orbiting satellites. [.pdf]) No further
information has been forthcoming, and no Chinese papers have been
published on the Emdrive, though Yang has recently published work on
(unrelated) microwave plasma thrusters (.pdf).

Shawyer asserts that work is also being carried out in France, Russia
and in the United States by a major aerospace company. But he cannot
provide details beyond vague promises of “significant progress [that]
has been made in both theoretical and experimental work, within these
groups.” He also asserts that the British National Space Centre is said
to be reviewing the Emdrive. Again, no details.

The CEAS 2009 paper outlines recent progress and plans. Previous
thrusters generated relatively modest forces; the latest version now
being built is based on a cooled superconductor and should generate
more than 300 pounds of thrust for a 6-kilowatt input, Shawyer
promises. (But does not yet appear to have done so.) The plan is to
mount four of these thrusters on an unmanned demonstration vehicle that
will weigh about 1,000 pounds. The craft will have no wings: It will be
supported by the Emdrives and propelled by jet engines to about 230
knots. It will be capable of vertical takeoff and hovering silently in
place. If successful, it will be adapted as a personal transport -–
your very own flying car.

In the longer run, perhaps 10 years, Shawyer envisages a hybrid
spaceplane using Emdrive technology — see the photo above of a 2-meter
scale model. The idea is a craft capable of making the 10,000-mile run
from London to Sydney, Australia in under three hours … or taking a
40-ton payload on the moon in about four days.

Aeronautical engineers have been dreaming of such a craft for decades;
none have ever panned out. The theoretical advantage of the Emdrive
spaceplane compared to rockets is that it allows a slow ascent with low
acceleration rate. There is also no telltale rocket exhaust plume, and
this may be the source of some of the interest. At present, the launch
of a ballistic missile anywhere on Earth can be immediately spotted
from space. An Emdrive-based launch system would be undetectable and
could arrive from any direction, leaving the target of an attack no way
of knowing who to retaliate against.

This is the kind of factor that might drive governments to put money
into Emdrive projects. An investment in contested science is not
a probable winner — but the payoff could be a big one.

Researcher whose father found
old maps posits 2000 BC voyage to west coast.

History books tell us that the first Chinese settlers to Canada arrived
in Victoria about 150 years ago, but a U.S. researcher says she has
solid evidence that they came earlier. Some 4,000 years earlier.

That would be 3,500 years before 1492, when European explorer
Christopher "Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

Or 10,000 years after nomadic hunters from Eastern Siberia crossed the
frozen Bering Strait during the Ice Age, a migration taken by modern
scholars to account for North America's native population.

Charlotte Harris Rees, a retired civil servant from Virginia who came
to her role as researcher late in life and rather accidentally, says
she has proof the Chinese first sailed to the west coast of North and
South America, or more specifically, were carried eastward on Pacific
currents in 2,000 BC.

That explains, she says, why a number of placenames in the Americas
mean something in Chinese, such as Peru, or "white mist," in Chinese,
but not in Spanish.

And why certain symbols associated with Indian drawings found in
America are nearly identical to Chinese writing; why native American
infants share Asian babies' "Mongolian spots," a birthmark near the
base of the spine, as well as Asian bloodlines and jawlines; and why
ancient villages in China bear a resemblance to native American
settlements, right down to the teepees.

Rees is scheduled to talk about her research in her second book on the
subject, Secret Maps of the Ancient World, at Simon Fraser University's
downtown campus Tuesday evening. Her major research source was her
father, Dr. Hendon M. Harris Jr., a third-generation Chinese-born
missionary who came across an ancient Chinese map in an antique shop in
Korea in 1972. It showed major land masses such as Asia, India, Africa,
Australia and Europe and also included North and South America,
inscribed with the Chinese words Fu Sang, which the Chinese have long
referred to as a mythical land to the east.

Drawing on these seven map books, which he matched to 23 others in
collections around the world, he wrote a book called the Asiatic
Fathers of America in 1973. It was largely ignored, and Harris died in
1981.

It wasn't until 2003 that Rees read a bestselling book by Gavin
Menzies, a retired submarine commander living in London, and her
interest was piqued. It claimed Chinese explorers in multi-storeyed and
multi-masted ships beat Columbus to the New World by several decades.
"After I read Gavin's book, I thought maybe there was something to what
my father said," she said Saturday from Oregon, where she spoke to a
packed audience at Portland State University.

Scholars have dismissed Menzies' book which, along with a second,
similar book, has sold millions of copies.

But Rees endorses Menzies' work and the support is reciprocal. Rees,
who hasn't sold many copies of her book or an earlier one that
summarized her dad's research, isn't concerned about those who would
pillory their work as fiction. "Any time you try to change history,
there are going to be people who are going to resist it," she said.

She admitted she isn't an academic but said she draws on a variety of
academic studies to prove her theory, a labour of love that consumes
every day of what was supposed to be a quiet retirement. And she notes
she has the endorsement of Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, retired chief of the Asian
division of the U.S. Library of Congress, who studied her dad's maps.

Have you ever been in the woods and wondered what could be there,
lurking behind the trees? One group thinks they know. On a cool but
sunny October day, Dolly Sods Wilderness, located in the Monongahela
National Forest in West Virginia, is beautiful. The sun shines through
the trees and off the endless boulder fields.

But in its endless wilderness, Dolly Sods is a little bit spooky, too.
It’s a still, quiet place. And according to Billy Willard, it’s a great
place to search for Sasquatch.

“Typically we go out and visit sites where there’s been previous
sighting reports,” Willard said. “We do get encounters called in to a
hotline that we have, and we go out and we’ll research those areas
looking for evidence such as footprints, strange stick tree structures
and that kind of thing.”

Willard is the founder of Sasquatch Watch of Virginia, a group made up
of Bigfoot enthusiasts who collect information about the legendary
being in their spare time.

They’re camping out in Dolly Sods, traipsing around in the wilderness
area’s forests and bogs looking for signs of Sasquatch.

“As large as they claim this creature is, it’s got to have some weight
to it. And if it’s walking around out here, it’s going to leave a
footprint,” Willard says.

He finds something he thinks resembles a Sasquatch print in the bog,
deep in the mud.

“It could be a small track right there,” he said. “We’ve got a track
right here, not as big as the other one we saw over there. And again,
it’s old, you can tell it’s been here since the rain. But that might
actually be cast-able. There might be some toe impressions in there.”

He pulls out some plaster of Paris and makes a cast.

Some of the members of Sasquatch Watch of Virginia have actually had a
sighting—where they’ve come face-to-face with a creature they believe
is a Bigfoot. But even those who haven’t believe the creature exists.

Bruce Harrington is the self-described skeptic of the group.

“I think one of the biggest arguments that people have against the
existence of Bigfoot is there hasn’t been any proof,” Harrington said.
“From a logical standpoint, absence of proof is not proof of absence.
So just because we don’t have the proof that these creatures exist
doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

The men—and the group is made up solely of men—have an impressive
amount of gear with them. They pull out GPS navigators, trail cameras,
regular cameras, voice recorders and evidence bags. The latter is used
when a team member finds suspicious droppings. Into the bag it goes, to
be sent off to a lab for testing.

Everybody has their own theories about what kind of creature Sasquatch
is. Though he’s been hunting for years, Willard has never had a
sighting.

“I could accept that this thing is human, whether it’s an undiscovered
Native American tribe of people, I could accept that this is some kind
of North American ape that just simple hasn’t been documented yet,” he
said. “Those are the two main theories.

“Now you have some more out there theories, like these things are
aliens and came off a UFO. That they go through dimensions and can walk
through different portals. I think this thing’s flesh and blood,
whether it’s human or more ape.”

Though their weekend in Dolly Sods didn’t lead to any sightings,
Sasquatch Watch of Virginia is still looking for proof. They say it’s
out there.

Source: West Virginia Public Broadcasting
http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=11803

-
HISTORIES
MYSTERIES
DEPARTMENT
-

Mystery Stone Found Near
Church Linked to Knights Templar

A mysterious carved stone has been uncovered alongside a 12th-century
church associated with the Knights Templar. The stone has been dated to
the 12th century.

What appears to be the carved top of a sarcophagus was unearthed when
builders were excavating and reinforcing a wall alongside the old
ruined church in Temple, Midlothian.

But the inscriptions, which include symbols similar to those found in
Viking monuments, in medieval graves and in West Highland Celtic
carvings, have baffled archaeologists.

Crispin Phillips, who is renovating a house alongside The Old Parish
Church, said: "I was on a mission to repair the wall – which was
falling into the graveyard. We got near the bottom of the foundations
and found something buried there.

"We found one stone carved with a cross and then another with these
carvings on it."

He added: "We spent about half an hour in philosophical discussions
about what we should do about it. I felt we should do something, rather
than just bury it again."

He said the stone had been photographed and recorded but he was still
unclear whether further investigations would be carried out. "One of
the archaeologists who came out told us it was probably from the early
12th century," he added. "But really I'm still in limbo about what to
do about it."

Historian and author John Ritchie said the stone raised many questions.
"It is a crude carving, quite primitive, but I have never seen anything
like it in my life," he said. "It has a whole series of symbols on it
and the symbols are very interesting.

"The symbols at the bottom look like Viking sun compasses, while the
dials at the top look a little bit like a Celtic cross but with notches
carved on them."

Expert David Connolly, of Connolly Heritage Consultancy, said he
believed the stone was from the 13th or 14th century.

"It is a significant site because it was the Templar Preceptory for
Scotland," he said. "I think from the condition, it may once have been
set inside the church – which was once much bigger," he added.

"He could be a Templar, he could be a Hospitaller, he could just be a
knight who wanted to be buried there – but the heraldry is like nothing
anyone has seen before."

He added that he hoped further study of the stone was possible in the
future.

Mr Phillips said he planned to complete the rebuilding of the
17th-century graveyard wall and would build an arch into it so the
half-buried carvings could still be seen by interested scholars.

However historian and author Michael Turnbull said he doubted the find
was significant: "There were certainly Templars there but this might be
a fake."

The village of Temple in Midlothian takes its name from the Knights
Templar, who once had their Scottish Preceptory – their headquarters –
there.

The ruined chapel, which nestles in the valley at the foot of the
village, is all that remains of what was once an abbey founded by the
Templars on lands gifted by David I of Scotland in 1127.

Founded during the Crusades, the Templars was a religious order of
knights whose mission was to protect Christians in the Holy Land.

Some say they invented international banking, with a system of credit
letters used to pass funds to people fighting in the Crusades. The
Templars certainly grew rich and powerful. According to some accounts
they were the holders of treasures from Jerusalem.

But the organisation came under suspicion from the royalty of Europe
and the Catholic Church. Templars were hunted down and burned at the
stake.

Legend has it some of those fleeing persecution hid in this Midlothian
village – bringing their treasure with them.

According to local legend some of this treasure still lies buried in
Temple: "Twixt the oak and the elm tree/You will find buried the
millions free."

My paternal grandmother was born in a rural area of Sweden in 1891, and
when I was a boy she told me stories of the Tomte (as I understand it,
Tomte is plural and the singular is Tomten), small beings that took the
appearance of old, bearded men. The Tomte were no more than 3 feet tall
and wore pointed hats, which we’ve of course come to associate with
gnomes and similar creatures. Legend tells that the Tomte were capable
of invisibility and could shapeshift, sometimes taking the appearance
of a large, grown man.

Also, according to legend — and Grandma Alice’s stories — Tomte would
usually be found on a farm and would carry out chores at night and help
care for the farmer’s animals. It was thought to be bad luck to see a
Tomten, but my grandmother claimed that she would often find his small
footprints in the snow or mud around her home.

Although basically a benevolent spirit, the Tomten was easily offended
and could be vindictive. If, for example, the Tomten felt that the
farmer was mistreating his livestock, heard swearing in the barn, or
neglecting to clean up a mess, the Tomten would become incensed and
cause mischief. Items around the house were found broken, the milk
curdled, even the cows’ tails tied together. Tomte would also become
angered and would seek revenge if they were sighted or if the farmer
and his family failed to leave a bowl of porridge and butter out for
him on Christmas Eve. My grandmother and her family used to follow this
tradition, leaving out porridge with butter for the Tomten each
Christmas Eve.

My grandmother was quite insistent that the Tomte were not merely the
stuff of fairytale and legend, but real beings that occupied the farms
and rural landscapes of Sweden. It was these stories that contributed
to my lifelong fascination with tales of diminutive humanoids.
Originally coming out of the pagan traditions regarding “earth spirits”
and the worship of the natural world, the Tomte later became associated
with ungodly or heathen beliefs after the Christianization of
Scandinavia. However, despite the sometimes negative association, the
Tomten has remained a popular figure in Swedish folklore.

Obviously, the more familiar correlative is the Gnome, of which their
are purportedly a great many variations and go by many names, including
Erdmanleins (Germany), Nains (Britain), Nisse or Nissen (Norway and
also Sweden), Tontti (Finland), Dudje (Bulgaria and Albania), and
others. Not surprisingly, legends of little people are found not only
in Europe, but throughout the world.

In North America the Native American people speak of “little feet” or
“baby feet” that often inhabit mountainous regions or dwell
underground. These beings are also said to have various magical and
psychic powers, including the power of invisibility and to mentally
confuse any human foolish enough to pursue them. Encounters with these
entities are also associated with memory loss and periods of missing
time, much akin to the reports that we hear in relation to the
UFO/alien abduction phenomena (a subject that I’ll save for another
post). An excellent article on Native American lore concerning little
people or babyfeet in North America can be found on Dr. Karl Shuker’s
blog.

In 1932, gold prospectors Cecil Main and Frank Carr, blasting open the
walls of a gulch in the Pedro Mountains of Wyoming, discovered a cavern
that had been sealed behind a wall of rock. Within the cavern sat,
cross-legged, a small, wizened figure no more than 14? high. The tiny
manneken was naturally preserved and mummified, having been spared from
the elements because of that fact that it was sealed within the cave.
The creature was removed from the cavern and later examined and
underwent an x-ray analysis by Dr. Henry Shapiro of the American Museum
of Natural History. The fact that the little man sported a full set of
teeth and a fully-fused skull dispelled any possibility of the small
humanoid being an infant. Interestingly, the Shoshone people told of
the Nimerigar, a small, aggressive people who occupied that region of
Wyoming. The Nimerigar were supposed to have hunted with bows and
poison arrows and lived in the Wind River and Pedro Mountains.

Personally, the question that I most frequently ponder is “are accounts
of these creatures merely folklore, or are they based in truth?” I
imagine that posing this question would be much more quickly dismissed
prior to 2004’s discovery of Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island
of Flores. These diminutive humanoids, which have become known as
“hobbits”, appears to be a separate species of human that only grew
about a meter tall. The bones found are believed to be as young as
13,000 years old, demonstrating that this tiny human lived at the same
time as modern Homo sapiens. If a distinctly different version of
humanoid existed alongside modern humans, I believe that we must
entertain the idea that other such diminutive humanoids may have lived
elsewhere throughout the world.

In South America many of the native people speak of the Duende, a race
of small goblin- or gnome-like creatures that make their home in the
surrounding forests and mountains. Recently, a video of a small,
pointy-hatted being in Argentina surfaced on the Internet. The
creature, if it is a fake, is a convincing one. It shuffles out of some
high grass with a strange sideways gait, into a road as a group of
teenagers returning from a fishing trip lounge nearby. The boys seem
genuinely startled, judging from the scream that escapes one of them as
the being appears.

The video, of course, is so outlandish that it has been dismissed by
most who have seen it, but coming from a graphics background I’m of the
opinion that this creature is not a CGI creation, and it certainly
seems to be quite diminutive — of proportions that you might only see
from a person who suffers from primordial dwarfism, an exceedingly rare
condition. His hat barely clears the high grass out of which it
shuffles.

So, is it possible that little people once existed, or do currently
exist? If so, are they flesh-and-blood beings such as ourselves, simply
an undiscovered race of creatures that has cleverly hidden themselves
from us? Or, are they something more than that? Are they of an
interdimensional or paranormal nature? Folklore has consistently
described them as having magical gifts and properties, but is that
nothing more than myth and fairytale?

As the newer developments in quantum physics point us to a different
view of the nature of reality, that we exist not in a Universe, but a
Multiverse, is it possible that there might be beings that can traverse
these different planes of existence, moving between our reality and
others? What connection, if any, have reports of these creatures in a
paranormal context have to do with the modern reports of alien
abductions and missing time experiences?

How to keep your sixth sense in tune, where to meet the undead, and
more.

Hunt on the ghost's time:
"Nighttime is good for ghost-hunting because the absence of noise,
people and other distractions of the day helps your sixth sense stay in
tune with your environment. That said, any time can be good, depending
on who's doing the haunting. The elderly lady who haunts my home, for
example, knocks on the walls throughout the day, but stays quiet at
night, unless we've done something to upset her, such as running the
vacuum too late. In that case, she knocks loudly and often, as if to
keep us awake as payback." —Garret Moffett, who leads Springfield
Walks' ghost tours and wrote "Lincoln's Ghost: Legends & Lore"

Bring a trigger object:
"Know your history of the place and of the haunting, then bring
something the spirit can relate to. If it's a kid, for example, bring a
toy, or if you're at a bank where there was a big heist, bring money
from the era of the heist. Talk about it. Ask questions. You may even
get enough spirit energy to move it." — Aaron Goodwin, a member of the
paranormal investigation crew for the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures
series

Be childlike:
"Adults walk around with blinders on. We've got so much on our minds.
Children are open to everything. Wide open. They see things before we
do. When I go into a historic (and therefore possibly haunted) spot,
I'm fascinated and ready for anything. I believe the ghosts sense that
you're sincere; that you want to see them." — Robert Edgerly, a
haunted-tour guide in Savannah (one of America's most haunted cities)
who literally wrote the book on Savannah Hauntings

Document evidence:
"Digital recorders are a really good, basic tool. Cheaper ones are
great because they generate white noise, which spirits speak within.
EVPs [Electronic Voice Phenomena] can be Class A, Class B, or Class C.
Class A is so unbelievably clear you can easily make out the words. At
our last location, we were asking questions and then playing back some
EVPs, and the spirits said our full names, in clear voices, actually
responding to our questions. Really bizarre." — Nick Groff, a member of
the paranormal investigation crew for the Travel Channel's Ghost
Adventures series

Engage all senses:
"You feel a presence, your hair stands on end, you hear sounds or feel
a touch, then turn around and nobody's there. Then there are smells —
earth, old perfume, roses, body odor. In Savannah, if it's built in the
1840s or 1850s, it's built by slaves. Imagine the anguish, the longing.
That stays. So you're standing there by yourself in one of these
buildings, and all of a sudden there's a strong smell of body odor and
it ain't coming' from you, that's an apparition." — Edgerly

Paranormal perspective:
"I find that spirits hanging around have usually suffered a sudden,
tragic death and are just trying to get their story told straight. It's
rather like the movie "Ghost".

Understand the risks:
"You're not hunting rocks. You're not hunting seashells. Provocation is
very serious. Things can follow you home. I've had to have my house
blessed twice. In this season's premiere episode, I was overtaken by a
dark entity. I suddenly wanted to attack Aaron and I started breaking
our equipment. I don't remember it, and watching the video was very
disturbing. I don't mess around with this stuff." — Zak Bagans, a
member of the paranormal investigation crew for the Travel Channel's
Ghost Adventures series